#ChroniclesOfAWriter – Writing is not a mediocre craft

I had a conversation with a publishing agent a few days ago and she was telling me about how difficult it is to get good manuscripts from writers to publish. I found this interesting because I have many writers at The Sparkle Writer’s Hub who complain that no publisher wants to publish their manuscript despite all the time and effort that they put into writing it.

This was something that got me thinking. Publishers are desperately looking for writers and writers are looking for publishers. So why is it hard for both parties to connect? After all, this appears to be a seamless fit.

As I spoke to the publishing agent and remembering my experience with some of the writers I have had the privilege of coaching, I had a better understanding of the cause of this problem.

Here it is.

Some writers are simply not ready to be published.

Before you raise your defenses, let me explain.

Publishing a book is serious business. Unfortunately, we live in a country where anything goes so we have a lot of sub-par work being thrown into the market. There are also sub-par publishers who throw standards to the wind by publishing any and everything.

Have you ever bought a book and right from the blurb you find cringe-worthy errors? I have found a lot of such books which are published locally.

I believe all writers should be held to the highest standard possible. This applies to publishers as well. In the few years that I have been able to coach writers and connect them with freelance writing opportunities, I have realized that some writers are not as good as they think. Getting them to improve is also a battle because they believe so much in the quality of their work that they feel there is nothing to be improved.

It’s quite sad.

As a writer, you must be committed to self-improvement on a daily basis. I have been writing professionally for over four years and I still make mistakes. Sometimes I have to check the dictionary to ensure that I’m using a word in the proper context.

A perfect writer does not exist. So if a publisher rejects your manuscript and tells you that your work is not good enough, don’t take it personal. The publisher is not out to get you. While I understand that there are bestsellers that were rejected by publishers because they failed to see the potential in the manuscript, sometimes the problem is with the manuscript itself.

The publishing agent I spoke to told me about the number of manuscripts they had to reject because they were poorly written; bad English, grammatical errors and structure. Instead of the writers to implement the feedback, they simply find a publisher who will accept to publish the manuscript despite the very obvious errors.

Writing is not a mediocre craft. You have to put in your very best. I don’t think you want to be known as the writer who always brings out low quality books. That’s not the kind of writer you should aspire to be.

Contrary to what you’ve been made to believe, there are publishers who want to publish your work. Your duty is to make your manuscript as irresistible as possible.

It’s my desire that the gap between publishers and writers will get smaller and completely disappear in the coming years. We are working hard at The Sparkle Writer’s Hub to bridge that gap.

If you need help to improve your writing skills, reach out to us. You can be the best writer that the world has ever seen.

I believe the desire to improve and learn everyday is important in every craft especially writing. One of the ways of improving I have learnt is to keep things simple. Most writers probably make avoidable mistakes because they want to impress hence they do too much.
Also, learning about basic grammar won’t hurt. We all should just be open to learning everyday.